At first coughing, the engine soon came to life and spun the propeller behind the boat. A murky brown mix of muddy salt water churns behind the little fishing craft as it pulls out of the dock. Plying onto the bayou, the rising red sun above peeks through an opening in the dark clouds. Its fiery brilliance is reflected on the surface of the water. The boat’s four occupants take pause to admire the beauty of the sight. Little do they know of the torrential rain falls that would begin later that late summer day in August of 2016. The likes of which Louisianans had never seen; a rainfall greater than that experienced during Hurricane Katrina. Yet onto a snake and alligator infested marsh these four adventurers went. Second by second, they sped farther away from civilization and hopes of rescue- if the situation were to arise…
During that second week of August, from the 6th to the 13th, I found myself in the musty streets of New Orleans with about a dozen other colleagues. Together, we formed a service project group. Our mission for that week was to assist a local charter school in setting up their classrooms for the school year. The school, Paul Habans Academy, was newly constructed at the time. Its creation was the result of federal aid that poured into the city following Hurricane Katrina. It took some eleven long years for the school to be built. Yet its doors were to finally be opened and our group was to play a small role in that happening.
Upon our arrival to the city, we were met by the warm rays of the sun and clear blue skies as we exited the airport. During the week, however, weather conditions began to deteriorate. A small group of us volunteers decided that some little bad weather was not going to stop us from enjoying the beauty that Louisiana has to offer. What better way to experience the state then to go fishing on the bayou? We chose to embark on our little expedition on a morning which the local forecast promised to be cloudy with little chance of rainfall. The afternoon was an entirely different story.
So we set out on our fishing trip in the early hours of August 11. That rainfall that was predicted to occur later that day, however, was unlike anything the area had seen in its recent history. We were on the open water as a mesoscale convection system was forming above us. Thankfully we had caught plenty of fish quickly so that we returned to our dock before midday. Rain started to pour from the skies over New Orleans later that afternoon. It was nothing compared to what the following day had in store for us.
I awoke to a pattering of raindrops on my hotel window the next morning on August 12. Slipping into my street clothes, I ventured down to the lobby looking for breakfast. The indoor dining area was right next door to the hotel’s inner courtyard which contained a small pool. The sight astonished me. Taking a swim just the day before, floating on my back with lush exotic flowers flowing off hotel room balconies above me, the surface of the pool was now violently shaking from the impact of thick rain drops. The rain did not falter from escaping endlessly from the dark sky above. It honestly looked as if no pockets of air existed between the drops. It was that dense.
Stepping outside of the hotel into the torrential rainfall, I took in the dark beauty of the sight. I was even compelled to traverse through a puddle of rain water, at least an inch deep and growing ever bigger, to reach an epic looking statue of a colonial French explorer that sits in the center of Bienville Street. I caught a few people, standing under restaurant canopies and door frames, looking at me strangely as I stood out in the rain snapping a photo of the statue. The contrast of the figure in the foreground with the dark sky in the background just seemed like something worth taking a photo of.
The group I was with spent that night at a restaurant, enjoying the company of one another. We feasted on the bayou fish that were caught the morning before. We were enjoying ourselves in New Orleans as locals upstate from preparing for the worst. The next day, over ten rivers in the state began to experience major flooding. They were swelling from a rainfall that was estimated by some to have been three times as greater than that from Hurricane Katrina. Over 140,000 homes in the region were damaged. New Orleans escaped the worst of the flooding. And on that same day as people were climbing onto Coast Guard rescue boats from the roof tops of their flooded homes, I travelled back to mine nestled away in the suburbia of Chicago. This assignment made me realize how lucky I was that week. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time could have easily ended my life.
Best regards,
Artur
